From The Desk Of Bird Of Youth’s Beth Wawerna: The Rock*A*Teens

Bird Of Youth has no business being this good. Really. If writing and recording a really beautiful album was as easy as Beth Wawerna and her crew made it look, wouldn’t everyone do it? That’s sort of the story here. For most of her decade in New York, Wawerna was, in the words of her pal Timothy Bracy, “the consummate green-room insider.” Her background in journalism and her unerring taste had led to a number of indie-rock acquaintances who eventually became friends. It sounds like a pretty good time, hanging out in Brooklyn with the Mendoza Line’s Bracy and Pete Hoffman, Will Sheff of Okkervil River, Carl Newman, Charles Bissell of the Wrens, Nada Surf’s Matthew Caws and others. But it turned out Wawerna had a secret stash of her own songs, which she’d worked on and demo’d and never, ever let anyone hear. Eventually, she decided it was time to set those songs free. Her pals not only liked them, they helped her form a crack band—guitarist par excellence Clint Newman, drummer Ray Ketchem, bassist Johnny North, keyboardist Eli Thomas and accordion player Elizabeth Bracy Nelson—and recorded them. Sheff and Phil Palazzolo (New Pornographers, Ted Leo) produced. Bissell contributed a terrific guitar lead on one song. Caws sang. Members of Okkervil River and the National played. The finished album, Defender, was released in May, just in time to give your summer a worthy soundtrack. Wawerna and Clint Newman will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week, and once a day, Wawerna is having one of her famous friends guest blog. Read our brand new Q&A with her.

Wawerna: Sweet Bird Of Youth is the name of a Tennessee Williams play. So naturally people assume that’s where my band name comes from. But when asked, I am careful make it very clear that I did not name my band after the Tennessee Williams play. I named my band after the Rock*A*Teens album.

I grew up in Atlanta, in and around Decatur and the North Druid Hills area. The finer points of my music tastes during this time are discussed in depth elsewhere on this blog, but I felt the Rock*A*Teens deserved their own entry.

The Rock*A*Teens are more than just my favorite band ever to come out of Atlanta—they’re simply one of my all-time favorite bands. I’m going to give up on trying to hide my age and just tell you that I graduated high school in 1995, after which I immediately moved to Austin to attend college. In that respect, the Rock*A*Teens and I were ships passing in the night in Atlanta. Granted, I’d heard of them during my senior year of high school, but their self-titled debut album wouldn’t come out until 1996, so it actually wasn’t until college—when I would come home to the South on holiday and summer breaks—that I became a true fan. During those breaks, my high-school friends and I would reunite in our hometown and, on most nights, go out and drink. In doing so, we’d come across a Rock*A*Teens show every now and then. Unfortunately, I’m old and can’t quite recall where; my memory is hazy because that was a really long time ago and also because of beer. Maybe The Point? Star Bar? The Clermont Lounge? I think it was a bit too early for The Earl.

In any case—and I say this as a longtime fan of the Replacements’ perfectly married mess of barroom bashing and boozy introspection—I had never heard anything like the Rock*A*Teens and, especially, their fearless leader, Chris Lopez. This band was like a freight train coming directly at you, a clamor of chugging guitars and Lopez’s wailing, yelping, guttural yowling, shrieks and pleas. He didn’t just wear his heart on his sleeve, he ripped it out of his chest, bleeding and beating, threw it on the ground, then proceeded to tear it apart with his bloody bare hands right in front of you. To my young ears, it sounded like living and dying and loving and hating all at once. The Rock*A*Teens were completely exhilarating. Like a bizarro funhouse mirror of dingy ’50s surf rock, sullied girl group histrionics, balls-out garage rock and heroic guitar pop—all put through the wringer and then hung out to dry. But what made them so special was the band’s shockingly palpable, complete lack of pretension: musically, lyrically, vocally. Everything about them was real. They meant it all. They felt it all. Lopez’s songwriting personality—his voice and his words—was sharply poetic, hopelessly cool and yet entirely unaffected. He was writerly and “literate” (before it was cool to be so), but he also had a cunning self-awareness and a morose sense of humor devoid of all pretense. He could either crack you up or break you down, and you didn’t care which, you just wanted more. Even in the band’s quieter moments—amid Lopez’s softer, more restrained musings on self-scrutiny, lust and longing—the music and words felt no less immediate, no less dangerous and no less invigorating. He had a way of sounding broken and mortal, like he might die tonight or die trying.

And when I put these records on today, I still feel every bit of that—every bit as intensely. “Your Heart Or Your Life,” “Never Really Ever Had It,” “Stand Tall,” “Clarissa, Just Do It Anyway,” “Black Ice,” “Please Don’t Go Downtown Tonight,” “Pretty Thoughts Strike Down The Band,” “Small Town Soap Opera,” “Stranger Coming!” “If I Wanted To Be Famous (I’d Have Shot Someone),” just to name a few. I mean, I put these songs on and feel like I can do anything.

I am always shocked and saddened at how little live footage there is of the Rock*A*Teens on the Internet, but then I remember that this was before the ubiquity of cameras and cell phones at rock shows. There is, however, this 10-minute mini-doc, and it’s pretty great. The amazing Kelly Hogan—who played guitar in the Rock*A*Teens until about ’97—gives some of the band’s backstory. There’s also some cool anecdotes from producer/engineer David Barbe and Merge’s Mac McCaughan, a predictably hilarious Jon Wurster cameo and a few live clips that I think capture some of the magic—like Lopez in all his glory and the incomparable guitar work of Justin Hughes, who totally went to my high school.

At about the 1:18 mark, you’ll get a taste of one of my absolute favorite choruses in rock music. “Sweet Jesus, take my head in your hands/‘Cause I feel myself going down/To the Southland, where it began.”

That shit makes me want to break things.

The Rock*A*Teens unwittingly anticipated so much of what was to become huge in indie rock, yet for whatever reason, they slipped under the radar. I guess it wasn’t the right time. I don’t know. But I do know that if any of their LPs—The Rock*A*Teens (Daemon, 1996), Cry (Daemon, 1997), Baby, A Little Rain Must Fall (Merge, 1998), Golden Time (Merge, 1999) or Sweet Bird Of Youth (Merge, 2000)—were released today, they would be fucking huge. But maybe they weren’t supposed to be. And maybe that’s OK.